Unforgiven
by Corinne 22
Summary: Won 2nd place in the Crazy Days of April Contest: When you die, is what is written on your tombstone more important than whether or not your life held any meaning? If you changed anyone else's path or life? If you were considered someone good or someone bad? If your actions spoke heavily to at least one person?


**Theme: Crazy Days of April**  
Story Title: Unforgiven  
**Rating: M**  
Beta'd  
Word Count: 3,871  
**Holiday:** **Plan Your Epitaph Day**

**Unforgiven**

**by Corrine 22**

_I'm getting by with my wicked ways  
_

_I'm loading up and I'm taking names_

_I'm going to dig my way to hell_

_Eminem-Wicked Ways_

_The prodigal son_

_The diabolical one_

_Very methodical when I slaughter them_

_Eminem-3am_

"So, tell me how you're feeling today, Mr. Cullen." She draws this question that's spoken like a statement through a sigh as she adjusts in her chair.

I'm tired of all of these questions, all of these answers that I'm supposed to give. I didn't see the point in it at all. I knew what the verdict would be, despite my lawyer trying to give me some form of false hope.

I tried to think of an appropriate response. Despite feeling that no matter what I said the result would be the same. I still didn't feel like telling some strange psychiatrist any ounce of truth about me. How did I feel? How don't I feel seems more appropriate.

When you kill people for the military, for "your freedom", it's your job. It's seen as something heroic. You get medals, you get praised and all the kids look up to you as you're paraded throughout the streets on Veterans Day. It's all a sick joke. If I was out on the streets doing the same thing, just without dog-tags swaying from my neck, I would be called mental. All you get then is endless psych evaluations, jail time, and possible death row. Doesn't make much sense, does it? I'm still the same sick bastard either way. There are still innocents lost. I'm still a killer. The only difference is now I chose whose life should come to an end. Instead of being told when, who, and how to do it.

"Fine," I decide to respond through gritted teeth. We both know how much I don't want to be here. Court mandated and all that. Like it's my last shred of hope. Please...I think we all know there is no more hope left. Maybe never was. What they don't know is I choose death. Not life in prison. Not any life at all.

She looks at me with thinly veiled contempt, knowing I'm not going to let it go.

"Want to try to talk about your parents today?"

She's attempting to get a rise out of me. She might have been doing a great job at it if I wasn't so good at hiding my true self and keeping these walls up. It might make any normal man react to talking about the parents who abandoned him at such a young age. To live in countless foster homes and looked over for most of his life. But it helped build my resolve, not crumble it.

"You know, Jasper, talking to me might finally help your case. They could determine you mentally unfit and go a lot easier on you."

All I do is stare blankly above her head, a nail hole in the wall holding so much more meaning to me than her words.

"What about your time in the military?" she tries again.

The war makes you into a killer, coming home afterwards you fight harder to find the man you're supposed to become. To be a man at all. You have to be one kind of man in Iraq then another when you come home. Like a Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde type of situation. Like everything you've been through, what you've seen doesn't change you to the core. Doesn't change any semblance of a man you could have become if you never stepped foot on that foreign ground. Like the life back here should be so much easier because we live in a much safer world. You have those people who are grateful they made it back here. But, looking back, I wish that I would have just died there.

She looks at me during my silent thought process and sighs again. I suppose she sees the resolve in my eyes to not talk any further. There's nothing of a man left inside of me to save. She's just doing her job. Why she would care or put any second thought to my situation is beyond me.

"Okay, Mr. Cullen," she says in a matter of fact tone. I guess we're no longer on a first name basis now that she's done with me. "As you know, your court date is the day after tomorrow. They are going to have a meeting with me later to discuss your evaluations. Seeing as how you've given me very little to work with I doubt it's going to go in your favor."

She pauses for a moment, making it a point to make eye contact with me, her face stoic. "I wish you would have given me more, opened up a little to me."

We are silent as I stare back at her, confused to the emotion behind her eyes. She quickly looks down at her watch, effectively ending anymore conversation.

"Okay, time for you to go back now."

I give her a silent not and stand to walk to the door to be escorted back to my cell.

"Jasper?" I hear in a hushed tone behind me. I turn my head to look at her over my shoulder. "Good luck," she says to me, averting my gaze. I walk out the door in continued silence. There is no point in saying thank you. I didn't believe in luck, let alone believe that I would be graced with any of it. Or deserve it.

**FWAR**

The cell door slams behind me and I'm left to my own mind. The last place I would ever want to be. It almost makes me wish for the stereotypical psychotic cellmate to divert my brain. But sitting on this hard, unforgiving bed my equally unforgiving memory comes creeping back to me. There is no point to try to sleep it away. Sleep is just another thing that I'm not allowed to have. It used to be that every time I would close my eyes their faces would appear. But now I see them with my eyes wide open. At any given time.

_The child slowly walking up to me, innocence on his tiny, malnourished frame. He's hunched over, arms wrapped around his stomach and sides. Thinking he's hurt, I walk up to him cautiously as to not frighten him. Right as I lower down to my knees to be level with him, he raises his head. His eyes meet mine and they look cold and callous. Shocked at his calculated stare I raise a hand to touch his elbow, trying to lend a helping hand, to show him some form of kindness. Just as my fingertips graze his skin he straightens and his arms fall and I'm staring at a bomb strapped around his waist._

_One of the soldiers in my platoon screams something at me and I feel his arms wrap around my shoulders to drag me back away from the little boy. He drops me on the ground as three other soldiers surround the boy, guns drawn, everyone shouting. All of their voices feel muffled as I continue to sit on the ground, too scared to move._

_The boy takes a step forward. He looks around at them and stares straight into the barrel of each gun before he sets his eyes back to the man standing right in front of him. The soldier squares his shoulders and grips firmer on his gun, his hands shaking. My vision snaps back and forth between his gun and the eyes of the boy I thought once to be so innocent. In America we are taught to have our kids remain kind and gentle, to nurture them and raise them to be honest. Here they are used as a ploy against our emotions. They are seen as a tool, a means to raising our death count._

_I cringe, knowing the ending but not able to look away. Just as the boy's hand reaches down to trigger the bomb the gun goes off. Right before the bullet hits the boy in the chest, right where his little heart was beating and had kept him alive for eight years, his eyes meet mine. The moment the bullet pierces his skin his face contorts and all malice disappears. I yell out at him, my body suddenly scrambling, fingers clawing the ground to reach him, like I could somehow save him._

_He was already dead by the time I got over to him. I watched in horror as the blood seeped out through his dirty, thin shirt feeling a similar sharp pain in my own chest. I raised my eyes up to his face, no longer able to see the proof of his life leaving his small body and saw the look that should have been there all along. In death, just like when a child sleeps, he looked so calm, so serene. And in one quick moment it was all taken away. Just because of the war. Just because they trained him from such a young age that they needed to do this. Forcing such a young child to grow up so quickly._

_In that moment I felt so horrible for all of the children there. That they had to grow up so quickly. That they couldn't grow up like the rest of us. To be able to play and have their most sad moment of the day just be as simple as a fallen ice cream cone. That they were witness every day to death and pain and not be able to even go to school or have the proper health care. That they were probably brought into this world through another type of act of violence to just be shoved into uncaring hands. That this boy who now lay dead before me wouldn't be able to grow up and try to reach his full potential, to do something great in this fucked up world, to change somebody's life for the better. To be able to save someone's life unlike the way I was unable to save his._

_The sun beats down on me and I feel more sweat roll down my back, making my clothes stick uncomfortably to my skin, making me feel almost suffocated. Me and five other soldiers are stationed at a gate to deny anyone access to the other side, to not allow anyone to get out._

_In the distance I see a silhouette of something moving, making me snap out of my heated daze, and I alert the man standing next to me. He looks over at the two men next to him, cocks his gun and nods in the direction of what I now realize is a vehicle rapidly approaching us. The rest of us raise our guns as I move to stand right in the middle of the locked gate. One of the men stands to the side, his hand raised to let the people in the car know to stop. By this point I can see there are at least two people in the vehicle. But they show no signs of slowing, dust kicking up and swirling through the air as they barrel down, aimed straight towards me. We all start screaming for them to stop but they either don't care or don't hear us. I look over to my right to silently ask a question to the other soldier, panic now rising in my chest._

_Do we shoot or give them a chance to finally stop? Is this a regular civilian car or a terrorist's car bomb?_

_I can see the same panic I feel setting into everyone else's eyes as we realize that these people are not slowing down. If anything, they seem to be coming at us even faster. The sweat pours off of the back of my neck at a heavier rate as I'm gripped with the decision to move or to shoot. To kill or risk being killed._

_I raise my hand and wave my arm to signal for them to stop one last time, hoping with everything I am that they don't force me to make the choice I think I have to._

_They are now so close that I can see the person behind the wheel is male and the passenger female. I set my feet apart, bracing myself for the powerful kick of my gun as the other soldiers continue screaming at them to stop. In a split moment, like my body is disengaged from my mind, my finger lays heavier on the trigger and I shoot. The discharge of my gun sets off the other four to join. The windshield explodes into millions of pieces as my bullets pierce through it, the tires blow out from another man's gun and the car flips over onto it's side._

_The silence that follows after hurts my ears and I can feel the pounding of my heart in my head, behind my eyes. I watch for any signs of movement as the dust settles over the car, trying to catch my breath._

_One of the men start tentatively walking up to the car and we all instinctively follow. I walk up to the driver side door and crouch down, my gun still aimed in a protective stance. I see the man is taking shallow breaths and blood pours from his head and his mouth. I get ready to grab him and rip him from his seat to the ground to question him and hear him mutter something._

_"State your business," I say to him not wanting to chance it since he's still conscious._

_He moves slightly, a twitch of his finger and I aim my gun more firmly at him._

_"State your business or I will shoot you right now!"_

_"Hospital," he manages to sputter while spitting out more blood. "My wife...labor...she needs to get to the hospital."_

_I peer around him to the passenger side and see the woman slumped over almost upside down, her arm that hung out the window now chopped off from the force of the ground slamming into the car. My heart sinks and I want to throw up._

_This wasn't a terrorist. This wasn't any sort of attempt of a car bombing. This was just a loving husband trying to help his wife and his soon to be child. This was just a panicked soon to be father._

_And as I watch his hand falter as he reaches towards her and then falls as death also takes him, I realize that I killed them both. I was responsible for killing innocent people and an unborn baby._

These are things that keep me awake at night, the people who follow me around everyday and loom over my conscious. The eyes of the dead people staring back at me. Those people and many more that I killed in the name of the American military. The ones I had to shoot from a distance and the ones I was close enough to watch as the life left their eyes.

I turn on my cot to face the wall and stare at the cracks as I try to chase these thoughts away. But, in a way, I feel bad if I do. Because I feel like I deserve to keep reliving these horrible things that I've done. Their death should live on in my mind throughout whatever messed up life I have left. Because they don't have a life to live anymore brought on from my hands.

The next day at lunch I notice people part for me as I walk towards a table. While I am searching for a place to sit at a table by myself another man I haven't seen before sits down next to me. I don't acknowledge him, just pick up my fork and beginning eating what they like to call food. After many moments he speaks up.

"I just wanted to say I heard what you did and I know your court date is tomorrow so, just in case I never see you again, I wanted to let you know I look up to you for what you did. We all do."

Anger sets in and my head snaps up to his, my nose just inches from his face.

"You look up to me for following dumbass orders and getting shipped to another country to kill all of those people?! What kind of sick fuck are you? Do you have any idea what the hell happened there? What kind of depraved acts women were forced into that I was witness to? Any semblance of a fucking clue how many innocent people were slaughtered by us?"

He looks taken aback for a moment before he speaks up. "No. Not all. I...I meant what you did when you came back. All of those people you killed that you were sent in here for. That's what we admire. Ending the suffering of innocent people here and protecting them."

I realize what he means and sit back in my chair in shock. It's a totally different reality in here then it is outside. In here people admire you for what so called normal society shuns you for.

The innocent ones. Means something so different to me here.

It all started when I was walking home from one of my many nightly walks to try to get out of my head. I was rounding a corner when I heard a man shouting from behind his house. When I went to investigate to make sure everyone was okay I witnessed him yelling at his son that looked to be five years of age. He was screaming at him to pull down his pants, a belt swinging from his fist. He forced the boys clothes off to stand naked in the yard while he beat him with the buckle end of his belt. The child's painful cries forced the faces of every hurting child I saw back in Iraq to my memory and before I knew it the man's throat was held tight in my grip. He tried to fight back but he was no match for my trained skills. I ripped his belt out of his hand and threw him against the side of the house with my other hand still on his throat and elbow firmly against his chest.

"Do you have a neighbor you trust?" I said to the little boy, turning my head to him. "Somewhere close and safe you can go to?"

His back already had huge, welts turning purple with blood starting to trickle out of them. He nodded his head and started running.

I dragged his father back into the house and slammed the door behind me. He was screaming obscenities at me, struggling beneath my grasp. I kicked his feet out from under him and let him fall hard to the floor before I started treating him the same way he did to his son.

"How do you like it now, you cock sucking asshole? Doesn't feel so good to become somebody's bitch does it? So little of a person you have to beat on a small child because you're not man enough to take on someone stronger?"

His cries echoed off the walls as I beat him in his face and all over his torso, while visions of Iraq flashed through my clouded vision of rage. I don't know how long it took until his body finally gave out and he died.

That began the serial killing of my life that I quickly adapted to. Anytime I saw a child being beaten, abused or neglected I would end up paying a visit to their home later that night. It was almost like a vindication for every wrong thing I felt I did before. Like these deaths didn't make up for the other ones, but it sure did help me feel like I was righting a wrong in their names.

I looked in the eyes of the man sitting before me, lunch forgotten and unwanted, and nodded my head at him.

"Thanks," was all I could reply.

**FWAR**

The next day at my court date I was told what I already knew was going to happen. Sentenced to lethal injection.

But I was okay with it. Because death seemed like a fitting thing by this point for me. It meant I no longer had to live tortured by these images of senseless deaths. Looking around the courtroom as they ushered me away I became even more okay with it. Because looking back at me were the eyes of what our society calls victims but to me were only the eyes of soulless people who mourned the deaths of others who mistreated children. Kids that they should have been so grateful to have. Kids that should have been raised with love, to become adults they could be proud of. Adults that could pass on all of that unconditional love and support to their own children. Instead they took for granted what they had and abused it and marred the possibility of them having a normal life.

So despite the cheers to my death, I walked out of that court room with my head held high.

**FWAR**

Laying on this table, my wrists, ankles and head strapped down, I feel cold chills spread up my body at what is about to become. If there is a hell, I feel as if I would be joined by every other military man who faced the same as I did.

When I was younger I thought that when I died it would be at an old age, not the thirty-two year old man I am now. That I would have an epitaph proudly stating that I was a beloved and loving husband and father. That this tombstone with loving thoughts etched into it would be placed in a military grave with an American flag placed in my coffin. Not the ashes that I would become to sit on a shelf somewhere in this jail. An epitaph that strangers would walk by and see and think that I must have been a good man, loved by many.

But now I just feel as if I was nothing. Even though I affected so many people's lives, I was still nothing. And I hoped that that's all that would follow after the needles were placed in my arm. Nothingness afterwards so that I could no longer remember those faces and their pain. Just like how I would have nothing written on a tombstone. Just a name on an urn.

As I felt the pull of death drown me under I prayed for the first time in my life. I prayed that every child who died by a senseless act or had to live through too much pain in their short lives were given a wonderful epitaph in my place. Written full of the love and innocence that they were forced to lose. That somewhere after their horrible deaths they were shown kindness and could learn what it meant to feel happiness and no longer witness the horror that they were forced into.

* * *

A/N: I just wanted to say that most of these stories were based on true stories. Also, that I would like to expand on this past the word count later.


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